Will Baucus now try tax reform?

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s decision not to seek reelection could give a jolt to efforts to simplify the tax code — an endeavor he can now devote himself to without the nagging concerns of how it will play back home.

“There will be a renewed effort on tax reform,” Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on Finance, said in an interview Tuesday. “I think Max will pour everything he has into it now and so will I.”

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In his retirement statement, Baucus made clear he wants to tally some achievements before turning over the gavel, including “simplifying and improving the tax code.”

“I’m not turning out to pasture because there is important work left to do, and I intend to spend the year and a half getting it done,” he said.

But regardless of the new political freedom Baucus will enjoy, he still faces the challenge of convincing fellow Democrats to get behind the effort and to do so the Montanan may have to do some relationship mending.

Baucus has recently broken with his party on key issues, including over the Democratic budget plan and a key gun control measure that President Barack Obama publicly pleaded with Democrats to support.

Some of his votes and decisions have been dismissed as a red state Democrat protecting himself from attacks back home, but tensions bubbled up this week when leadership bypassed Baucus’s committee and brought to the floor an online sales tax bill he opposes.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) took exception to Baucus’s complaint about how the bill was being moved and defended the decision in a letter this week.

"I write to remind you that the committee has had ample time, opportunity and expression of member interest to consider the bill and has chosen not to do so," Durbin wrote Baucus and Hatch.

Tax reform remains a challenge on policy grounds with some of the most popular provisions on the books — such as the mortgage interest deduction — potentially on the table, forcing lawmakers who hope to stay in Washington to take tough votes.

But other departing lawmakers have been able to turn their lame-duck status into an advantage.

Former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) — facing an uphill reelection battle back home — announced his retirement in 2010 and turned his energy almost exclusively to crafting the bill that became the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.